An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons - marriage, or meat, or beer, or cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning.

Ambition is pitiless. Any merit that it cannot use it finds despicable.

Joseph Joubert

I love my work with a frenetic and perverse love, as an ascetic loves the hair shirt which scratches his belly.

Gustave Flaubert

But, I think it's great to be able to work with established directors, and then also first-timers. I feel like you learn from both of them, but then you can go and share your knowledge with each of them. That's really fantastic!

Juno Temple

I've always felt that what I have going for me is not my imagination, because everyone has an imagination. What I have is a relentlessly controlled imagination. What looks like wild invention is actually quite carefully calculated.

Terry Pratchett

Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.

Evelyn Waugh, "The Observer", Ap

In fact a lot of them I think are absolute baloney. Those Charles Olsens and people like that. At first I was interested in seeing what they were up to, what they were doing, why they were doing it. They never moved me in the way that one is moved by true poetry.

Norman MacCaig

I've had more people come up to me about 'Saving Silverman' than anything else. That and 'That Thing You Do!' But 'Saving Silverman' is the one I get most often. And I love that.

Steve Zahn

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

Thomas Jefferson

1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. 2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. 3. ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. 4. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. 5. FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing. 6. INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ'd in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions. 7. SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you...

Benjamin Franklin

Power corrupts, but lack of power corrupts absolutely.

Adlai Stevenson

A woman cannot do the thing she ought, which means whatever perfect thing she can, in life, in art, in science, but she fears to let the perfect action take her part and rest there: she must prove what she can do before she does it, -- prate of woman's rights, of woman's mission, woman's function, till the men (who are prating, too, on their side) cry, A woman's function plainly is... to talk. Poor souls, they are very reasonably vexed!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I can't tell someone that their dreams are impossible.

Paulo Coelho